“It is a moral and fiduciary responsibility to ourselves, our community and the world at large, to rid ourselves of misinformation by using credible data to justify our statements,” notes Mohandas Pai, Chairman of Manipal Global Education and Padma Shri Awardee.
He is also advisor to Data Reveals, the organisation behind a new conference entitled Tathya 2021 on February 27, which seeks to shine a light on crucial issues of Global Indian relevance, combat misinformation and attempt a fact-based repositioning of India in the global psyche. The word tathya itself translates as fact or reality.
“Having lived outside India, you can see how lop-sided the worldview about India is. It is time, India structurally corrected that perception inequity,” notes Anuraag Saxena, the Singapore-based advisor to Data Reveals.
The conference will cover three main panels:
New narratives: Reversing a colonised gaze.
New age governance: Deploying today’s tools for a better tomorrow.
New world order: Repositioning India in the world’s eyes.
Some of the confirmed speakers for the event include India’s Cabinet Minister for Textiles, Smriti Irani, and Suresh Prabhu – India’s Sherpa to G7/G20. Besides Pai and Saxena, the others addressing the sessions will include UK-based Nehru Centre Director Amish Tripathi, India Inc. Founder & CEO Manoj Ladwa and retired Indian diplomat Syed Akbaruddin.
The conclave mission statement notes: “In the era of narrative wars, Asian and African nations are viewed through stereotypical lenses.
“The normalisation of biased reportage, typecasting in Hollywood, and institutionalised microslander not just prevents the truth from being seen, it also prohibits nations from achieving their full global potential.
“This conclave will deliberate on actionable efforts to correct biased narratives, enhanced approaches towards governance, and managing optics in the new world order.”
The organisers, Data Reveals, are focussed on empirically testing popular opinions and narratives, as hypotheses should be, and use data to verify their factfulness. They work on drawing together data from various official sources, analyse and juxtapose them with each other, to build saner, factual, data-backed conclusions.
*Info: Tathya 2021